EXCLUSIVE: Noah Wyle is scaling up his company Last Call Productions as part of The Pitt star and executive producer’s overall deal with Warner Bros. Television, which is behind the Emmy-winning medical drama. In his first major move six months into the multi-year pact, Wyle has brought in veteran TV executive Jeremy Gold as Head of Development and Production.
“It’s sort of an extension of a deal I had here years and years ago when I was on ER,” Wyle said, referring to his previous pact with Warner Bros. Television, which also produced the NBC medical drama. “I love the executives here, I’ve got a great rapport history at the studio, and now with The Pitt, it’s only been accentuated.”
The goal is to turn Last Call into a full-fledged pod that produces series for both WBTV siblings HBO/HBO Max and outside platforms. Having a full-time job on The Pitt, on which he is a writer and director in addition to starring and executive producing, Wyle said he needed a seasoned executive to do that.
“I have a lot of other things that I want to be able to pursue creatively, so this seemed like a great opportunity to hang out a shingle, and I wanted to be very thoughtful because I wanted this to be an actually producing production company, not just perceived vanity deal,” Wyle said during an interview in-between takes on Season 3 of The Pitt. “The best way to do that would be to have somebody run it who everybody took seriously. So I was very thoughtful in the search, I asked for a lot of guidance and opinions from the people that I’m working with, and one name kept topping everybody’s list: Jeremy Gold.”
Wyle and Gold already share similar background, having both gone to the same university, Northwestern, and having both started in theater. Even more, Gold, who was an actor and theater producer before becoming an executive, worked for Wyle’s uncle, Sandy Speer, then-Executive Director of The Actors Theatre in Louisville, KY some 20 years ago.
During their meetings, Wyle and Gold discovered that they also shared taste and interests. The plan is to focus on quality over quantity and to curate a slate that spans drama, comedy and limited series, with each bringing a handful of existing projects into the fold. (While he has been working in drama for the past two decades, Gold was a comedy executive early in his career, including running the comedy department of Fox Broadcast Co.)
“He seems to be that wonderful trifecta of skills, where he has terrific taste as an executive and history of development,” Wyle said of Gold. “He’s extremely well versed in physical production, he’s produced shows in a lot of different genres, and he seems to be universally well liked. Everybody that I’ve told that I’m working with him just keeps commending me on my excellent taste. And when you have somebody who people are excited to pick up the phone to talk to, I think that’s worth everything.”
Wyle, who reunited with fellow ER alums John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill on HBO Max’s The Pitt, would like to have hands-on involvement beyond producing on projects developed by his company.
“I would love to be able to do a couple things concurrently, I’ve had great modeling in watching John Wells through the years, I’ve had some incredible mentors,” he said. “Obviously, I wear a lot of hats on The Pitt. I’m not going to put any of them down, but I would like to use my relative downtime to keep pursuing other opportunities and give jobs to other people. And there’s ways for me to stay involved, especially if I’m not acting in them: write, produce, direct a pilot.”
Gold’s network executive background as well as Wyle’s experience as executive producer on The Pitt will also come in handy as they look to be budgetary agnostic and open to developing moderately priced comedies and dramas.
In a recent guest column for Deadline, Wyle, who has been a vocal supporter of keeping production in L.A., argued that The Pitt model, which involves large seasons of 15 episodes each produced at a modest budget on a yearly cadence, is replicable. (The Pitt films in L.A. with support from the CA tax credit program.)
“I personally think that frame defines the art, and if you have a frame that’s a budget constraint, or you have a frame that is a cast availability, or you have a frame that is a location, it can be viewed as a limitation, it could be viewed as a creative framework to work within,” he said. “I’m excited about exploring all sorts of different avenues to keep as much work in Los Angeles as possible, even if it means going into it with a kind of expectation that certain confessions have to be made, that just becomes a creative challenge.”
As for Last Call, Wyle is dusting off a name he had come up when establishing a corporation ages ago.
“It has no significance other than I probably heard it in a bar and needed to come up with the name of the corporation, and that sounded appropriate, so we’re going with it,” he said.
With the industry undergoing contraction and facing challenges, the name could be perceived as a metaphor about the future of the television business.
“Well, let’s call and let’s get it in while we can,” Wyle quipped. “Let’s order everything we can possibly order before they kick us out of here, shall we?”
Most recently, Gold ran his own banner, Gold Company, under a production deal at Blumhouse Television where he had been an executive for eight years. He is executive producing Blumhouse’s series for Prime Video Scarpetta, whose second season recently wrapped production.
“I’m enormously excited to join forces with Noah. He has truly proven himself to be a uniquely talented, and impressive multi-hyphenate artist,” Gold said. “I also look forward to partnering with the extraordinary team at Warner Bros. Television.”
Across various roles, including Co-President and President of Production, Blumhouse Television, Gold has shepherded such series as Sharp Objects, The Loudest Voice, Sacred Lies, The Good Lord Bird, The Purge, Into the Dark, The Thing About Pam, The Sticky, The Bondsman as well as the eight-film Welcome To The Blumhouse slate for Amazon and documentaries/docuseries This Is Home, Pray Away, A Secret Love, Our Father and Worst Roommate Ever.
Gold joined Blumhouse from Endemol Shine Studios where he served as SVP and EVP and led the company’s foray into scripted programming with series like Hell On Wheels and Kingdom.
As SVP Comedy at the Fox network and VP Comedy at 20th Century Fox Television, Gold developed such series as Arrested Development, The Bernie Mac Show, American Dad and the breakout reality show The Simple Life.
Wyle won two Emmys for The Pitt last year, for Lead Actor In a Drama Series and Outstanding Drama Series. He is nominated again in both fields this year, along with Directing For a Drama Series.
“I’m feeling very blessed to experience the second lightning strike, and I’m going to try and make the most of the moment,” Wyle said about finding great success with The Pitt years after ER. “So I hope we have many opportunities to speak in the future.”
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